Wholesale Time Capsule

tortoise in a museum case, text reads: TIME CAPSULE MAGGIE UMBER — 52 pgs, 6 in x 6 in
CMYK offset, perfect bound
~~Retail $12~~
Wholesale $6

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Summary

Time Capsule is a cache of sketchbook drawings, animals, and insects. Letterforms are treated with a casual randomness, punctuating a non-linear narrative. This is a book of beautiful, ambiguous visual poetry and questions.

Preview

open book with a three panel comic showing chimpanzees grooming each other

an open book with a checkerspot butterfly and a checkerspot caterpillar crawling up a stem

Blurbs

Maggie Umber's intimate drawings evoke a sense that life on earth, no matter how microscopic, can be immensely beautiful and complex.
— Jason Murphy

Reviews

Time Capsule is almost wordless, with the few passages that contain words functioning more as poetic framing devices or just lush expressions of a human trying to deal with the confusion of existence. Throughout the book there are letters and numbers rendered as drawings that become decorative design elements on the page, and though they occasionally remind me of where we came from, they also make me think of code, as if in Umber's words, she is seeking an "innate algorithm that breaks down the world hungrily." It's this revolving door of collecting and processing with no ultimate sense to come from the endeavor that I find both mysterious and compelling.
— The Comics Journal

Snapshots of moments that would be filler in a nature documentary but that, when collected and cataloged together, delve into the intimacy of those moments and the complexity of animalistic relationships we can never fully understand.
— Shawn Starr